Barrington District 220 compiling data to study effectiveness of new start times
Barrington Area Unit School District 220 doesn't plan to guess at whether new start times beginning in the 2017-18 academic year lead to improved student performance.
Linda Klobucher, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, said District 220 will be aggregating data for daily attendance, classroom achievement and well-being, the last determined by the number of school nurse visits and behavior incidents.
"We know that the reason we're doing this (start time changes) is for the well-being of children," Klobucher said. "And because their well-being improves, their academic achievement improves."
Under the plan approved by the school board late last year, Barrington High School students will begin their academic day 70 minutes later when they return to school in August. They will start at 8:30 a.m. and end at 3:21 p.m.
District 220's two middle schools will begin at 9 a.m. instead of 7:55 a.m., ending at 3:55 p.m. Elementary schools will begin at 8 a.m., an hour earlier, and end at 2:40 p.m.
Superintendent Brian Harris said officials want baseline data from students before the 2017-18 academic season, so comparisons can be made to the 2016-17 start times. Most students and all certified teachers also received surveys, with findings to be presented after 2017-18 school year.
"I think it's going to take a few years, because I think kids that start next year as freshmen or start in sixth grade in middle school, they'll have a different perspective after a couple years," Harris said. "The kids that are seniors next year that have known something different, I think we're going to see different kinds of data."
Klobucher said students in third grade through junior year of high school received questions to help the district compile the baseline data. Some of what the district wants to know is when they go to bed, if they are tired or alert in the morning and whether they take a nap when they get home.
"Just some real typical, basic questions to kind of find out if we can find some peaks and valleys for students now versus what that looks like next May," she said.
School start times are not only an issue in the Barrington area, but also are part of a national education conversation. Harris said District 220 was represented at the inaugural Adolescent Sleep, Health and School Start Times National Conference last month in Washington, D.C.
Research was presented by experts from across the country, including Harvard Medical School, University of Minnesota and the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine.
Information compiled from the conference experts shows teenagers' brains during adolescence have a shift in their sleep-wake cycles due to developmental changes that signal when to feel tired. That means teens cannot fall asleep before about 10:45 p.m. and they remain the sleep mode until roughly 8 a.m.
Elementary schoolchildren are biologically capable of falling asleep in early evening and rising early without ill effects, according the conference experts.
"There was significant research interest in this type of stuff," Harris said, "and I think the things we're measuring here are spot on with the national conversation."